


pray til I go blind because nobody ever survives

by mercuryhatter



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: M/M, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Scarification, consensual knifeplay, dead barricade boys, mentions of various Patron-Minette shenanigans, most of them are dead, you know murder stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-15
Updated: 2013-02-15
Packaged: 2017-11-29 10:02:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/685701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuryhatter/pseuds/mercuryhatter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Instead of latching onto Enjolras and Les Amis, Grantaire latches onto Montparnasse and Patron-Minette. Everything is different but oddly all the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pray til I go blind because nobody ever survives

Grantaire was not a naturally passionate being. He studied art because he was good at it and it was something to do with his hands, to fill the otherwise empty hours. His teachers bored him with their rules and theories and dry rhetoric; his fellow students irritated him, all bright and self-assured and full of ideals. He wanted to scream at them that the world was broken, to shake them bodily by the shoulders until they understood that no amount of words or pamphlets or broken bones at rallies could ever fix it. Instead of doing this, he drank. Drinking was freedom, it was a mask to wear so that he could load his words with as much cynical bile as his body could hold without ever drawing a second glance. He couldn’t ever dim the light of these students, he came to realize, but he took some comfort in trying.

Montparnasse was not bright. He was a moonless night, the smog over the city, the thick water of the Seine. He was broken glass, dressed in laces and top hat and his murderer’s smile, and Grantaire gravitated to him—less of a moth to flame and more of a floating leaf tugged to a whirlpool. Montparnasse had only to wink at Grantaire and the man was done for; his graceful painter’s hands itched for a blade.

School was forgotten, paintbrushes abandoned, students’ cries obliterated, even the bottle was less of a draw when the same freedom could be found in the sheen of Montparnasse’s eyes. Those eyes were pale grey, blank and smooth and unremitting like marble, and Grantaire was hopelessly enamored of them.

There were others, of course; the underworld of Paris could not be run by a single dark angel, not even one such as Montparnasse, but Grantaire didn’t pay the others much mind. The thief, the brute, the illusionist, they were like cards in a deck to Grantaire, just pigment on paper in comparison to the white silk-gloved hand around his, the slender chest pressed to Grantaire’s back as Montparnasse guided him through the quick strokes to slit a throat, the careful motions to slip fingers unnoticed into a pocket, the harsh blow to render a man unconscious and silent. And how different these lessons were from the ones Grantaire had been used to: Montparnasse was cold as glass, but his mouth was hot and sharp against Grantaire’s. Grantaire gave himself over and Montparnasse took him for his own, as Montparnasse took everything he wanted in life, and with a slim blade that Montparnasse never used for any other purpose, he marked his possession into Grantaire’s chest. The pain was like fire, but next to the freezing touch of Montparnasse’s hands, Grantaire ached for it. And when he felt skilled enough he returned the favors, turning Montparnasse over beneath him and tracing the lines of tattered angel’s wings across the muscles of his back and arms.

“Lucifer,” Grantaire called him, and Montparnasse laughed and said he quite preferred Hades, and “does that make me your Persephone?” and “you’re more of a satyr than a queen, don’t you think?” Grantaire could see his point: Montparnasse was no morning star, but there was a difference in that he chose and delighted in reigning over his Hell, while Hades had been cast down to his underworld against his will. Montparnasse does nothing against his will. So Grantaire continued to whisper about fallen angels as he traced lines with the knife, and Montparnasse’s shoulders shook with laughter as he murmured back  _be serious_ , and Grantaire pressed down harder with the blade and growled into the back of Montparnasse’s neck,  _I am wild_.

Montparnasse took pride in everything (another Luciferian quality of his) and his work was no exception. But it was not with passion that he worked; he did not play with his prey. He was quick, thorough, ruthless, he made no mistakes. Grantaire was not at his level, but he did not want to be; missions given to Grantaire alone were usually fated to fail. He preferred to hold down those he was told to hold down, to set the traps and watch Montparnasse spring them, striking pitiless and full of all the conviction that Grantaire had set aside long ago as useless. And afterwards Montparnasse would pull Grantaire to him and give him kisses that tasted like blood, bruises that Grantaire would treasure falling like snowflakes from his fingertips.

They were indifferent to the happenings of the rest of the world, but not ignorant of them, and while soldiers and schoolboys fought in the streets Montparnasse and Grantaire laid together in bed and bided their time, trading bites and bruises while they waited. When the time for patience was done they slipped out in the silence of the aftermath to do their work. The dead covered the streets and the gutters were red and it was as if Paris had briefly rolled herself over, showing the underbelly where Montparnasse and Grantaire made their home to the rest of the world. It was a familiar territory, if uncommonly exposed, and the two of them stalked side by side through the carnage, reaping the leftovers, trinkets left in pockets, rings left on fingers, watches left in waistcoats. One of the fallen, half-crushed beneath a section of barricade, his hat lost somewhere in the fray, even wore tiny golden rings in his ears, and Montparnasse ripped them free with a sardonic grin and a remark about boys fancying themselves as new Saint-Justs. He gave one of the rings to Grantaire, who responded that the playacting boys had met a similar fate.

One of them hung from the window like a banner, melodramatically laid with his blond hair turned rusty with blood. There was nothing of value on him at all, but Montparnasse appreciated the tableau.

“At least he had the good sense to die picturesquely,” he said. Grantaire snorted.

“Foolish,” he replied.

“Do you think so little of ideals?” Montparnasse laughed. He wore his red joker’s smile, teasing as he fingered one of Grantaire’s curls. Grantaire shook his head and gave him a lopsided grin.

“If you were to die I’d simply pawn those pretty clothes and take your throne before anyone else could,” he said, and it was said like a joke but taken as a promise. Grantaire caught Montparnasse’s hand from his hair and slid the gold ring from the boy’s ear onto the little finger of Montparnasse’s hand, over the silk glove. Montparnasse laughed again and swung him around in an irreverent mockery of a dance.

“My little satyr,” he said fondly. “You see the beauty in nothing.”

“I see it in you,” Grantaire said, uncommonly solemn, and Montparnasse leaned forward as if magnetically pulled to bite Grantaire’s neck bloody.

**Author's Note:**

> this is all Dusky's fault and I love her for it
> 
> and I love this AU
> 
> and I need to write more
> 
> but here here's a preview
> 
> sorry I'm just extremely excited aaaah

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Saviours and saints](https://archiveofourown.org/works/685773) by [truethingsproved](https://archiveofourown.org/users/truethingsproved/pseuds/truethingsproved)




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